The present invention relates to wirings and element separation structure in the field of integrated circuit, and more particularly, relates to wirings and separation structure employed in redox electric element circuits formed by using oxidation reduction substances.
Heretofore, electric elements, for example, rectifier elements in metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) structure as shown in FIG. 1, have been employed in conventional integrated circuits. In FIG. 1, the reference numeral 11 designates a p-type silicon substrate, the reference numeral 12 designates an n-type region, the reference numeral 13 designates a p-type region, the reference numeral 14 designates an n-type region, the reference numeral 15 designates SiO.sub.2 films, and the reference numerals 16 and 17 designate electrodes. As shown in FIG. 1, a p-n junction is formed between the electrodes 16 and 17 (by the junction of the p-type region 13 and the n-type region 14), thereby attaining rectifying characteristics.
The conventional rectifier elements in the MOS structure can be hyperfinely processed, whereby LSIs of 1 Mbits employing the rectifier elements in the aforementioned structure or transistor elements in similar structure thereto are now put into practice.
In order to improve such elements in storage capacity and in arithmetic speed, the elements themselves must indispensably be in hyperfine structure, whereas mean free paths of electrons are substantially equalized to scales of the elements in hyperfine patterns of about 0.2 .mu.m in elements using Si and hence the independency of the elements cannot be maintained. Thus, it is anticipated that maturing silicon technology may run into a blank wall in the view of hyperfine structure in the near feature, and hence required is an electric circuit element based on a new principle which can crack the 0.2 .mu.m barrier.
To cope with the aforementioned problem, the applicant of this application has developed and disclosed an electric element which is implemented in hyperfine size in biomolecular level by using biomaterials as constituent members of the electric element. The details of the element is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,613,541 (or West German Patent Unexamined Publication DE No. 3600564A1).
The disclosed electric element (hereinafter called "redox electric element") will be briefly described hereunder.
A rectifier element having rectifying characteristics similar to those of a p-n junction type semiconductor and a transistor element having transistor characteristics similar to those of a p-n-p junction type transistor are developed by utilizing redox (oxidation-reduction) potential difference between two or more types of electron-transport proteins which are present in vivo and act to transport electrons through oxidation-reduction reaction. Thus, the elements are implemented in hyperfine size in biomolecular level, thereby attaining a high-speep circuit of high density.
Further, the inventors of this application have developed other elements, such as resistors, capacitors and the like, having a good affinity for the aforementioned elements in order to form a redox electric element circuit employing the aforementioned elements. However, wirings to electrically connect such elements to one another in an element circuit has not yet been studied.